Arachnologische Mitteilungen 58

14 G. Agapakis & G. S. de Miranda Geographical distribution and discussion The three specimens were found in the same place, the town of Agia Varvara, which is a suburb in the western part of the city of Athens (Fig. 2). This region is around 340 km away from the closest Greek island where C. ioanniticus was found (island of Kos, east Aegean Sea). This is in fact the western- most record for the species in the whole eastern Mediterrane- an region.The occurrence of the species in continental Greece may be the result of accidental transportation (however, none of the inhabitants of the flat where the animals were found went to areas where C. ioanniticus occurs) or the fact that the species has a wider distribution than previously expected. Charinus ioanniticus has a synanthropic nature and is known to be parthenogenetic (Weygoldt 2007, Blick & Seiter 2016, Miranda et al. 2016), thus growth of its populations and the ability to adapt to new localities with the proper environmen- tal conditions may be facilitated by those characters. Further investigation should be carried out on the many islands of the Aegean Sea and their caves, as it has been shown that the area has high levels of endemism (Fattorini 2002) and there is a general lack of knowledge about these islands’ diversity (Legakis & Maragkou 2009). A broader investigation of the existence of new populations in the Mediterranean could re- veal the stepping stone links between the widely separated specimens.The discovery of new populations of C. ioanniticus could also add new information about the biology and ecolo- gy of the species. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Mrs. Eleni Panou from the Laboratory Te- aching Staff of the Laboratory of Agricultural Zoology & Entomo- logy, Agricultural University of Athens, for helping with the photos and insisting on the publication of this new record. We are grateful also to Dr.Maria Dimaki, Head of Collections in the Department of Terrestrial Zoology,Goulandris National HistoryMuseum of Athens, for the help with the deposition of the specimen in their collection. Thanks also to the reviewers, Luis de Armas and Michael Seiter, and the editor, Petr Dolejš, who helped improve the manuscript. References Blick T & Seiter M 2016 Whip spiders (Amblypygi, Arachnida) of the Western Palaearctic – a review. – Zootaxa 4161 (4): 586-592 – doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.4161.4.11 Dunlop JA 2010 Geological history and phylogeny of Chelicerata. – Arthropod Structure &Development 39: 124-142 – doi: 10.1016/j. asd.2010.01.003 El-Hennawy HK 2019 New locality records of Charinus ioanniticus (Kritscher, 1959) in Egypt (Arachnida: Amblypygi: Charinidae). – Serket 16: 203-209 ESRI 2014 ArcGIS Desktop 10.2 Geostatistical Analyst. Environ- mental Systems Research Institute,Redlands.Software.– Internet: http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/ (4. Jun. 2019) Fattorini S 2002 Biogeography of the tenebrionid beetles (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae) on the Aegean Islands (Greece). – Journal of Bi- ogeography 29: 49-67 – doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2699.2002.00656.x Harvey MS 2003 Catalogue of the smaller arachnid orders of the World: Amblypygi,Uropygi,Schizomida,Palpigradi,Ricinulei and Solifugae. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood VIC 3066. 385 pp. Fig. 1: Charinus ioanniticus . a. Ex-situ photo of the first juvenile specimen collected; b. Image of the ethanol-preserved female; c. The container where the specimens were kept alive (photos by G. Agapakis)